The Berry Best

Scientists Work To Improve The Appearance, Taste And Shelf-life Of Fragile Fruits

June 07, 1990|By Lynn Van Matre.

Would old-fashioned strawberry shortcake seem quite so tempting if those plump, juicy berries were a sunny orange hue? What about a blueberry pie bursting with red or white berries? Ever consider slathering steaks and ribs with a barbecue sauce that bypasses ripe, red tomatoes in favor of red raspberries?

Orange strawberries, red and white blueberries, and raspberry barbecue sauce aren`t just figments of an overworked cook`s imagination. But the red raspberry barbecue sauce is the only thing you`re likely to find on market shelves anytime in the near future-or, for that matter, the distant future. Just introduced by the Rothschild Berry Farm, an Ohio company that specializes in berry-based gourmet preserves, mustards and vinegars, the raspberry barbecue sauce is available at Marshall Field`s and suburban Bockwinkel`s stores.

As for the funny-colored strawberries, they can be found in horticultural test gardens, where they are likely to remain.

says Doug Shaw, a geneticist in the Department of Pomology (the science of fruit cultivation) at the University of California at Davis, who is actively involved in breeding better berries.

``They don`t want them to be too dark, either,`` adds Shaw, who has grown orange, albino and deep scarlet strawberry varieties in Northern California test plots as part of his research. ``If strawberries are too dark red, the perception is that they`re overripe.``

Albino blueberries

Don`t look for red and white blueberries to show up in supermarkets anytime soon, either.

``We`ve got an albino blueberry growing in my research plot in Grand Junction, Mich., and we`ve been tossing around the idea of a red blueberry with some of the growers,`` says Rod Cook, a horticulturist with the 600-member Michigan Blueberry Growers Association, America`s biggest source of blueberries. ``Most of that is just for fun, though. I don`t know if many people would really want to buy them.``

Consumers, apparently, don`t like the idea of red or white blueberries any more than they cotton to orange or white strawberries. (Although, you must admit, it would be fun to bake a patriotic red, white and blue blueberry pie for the Fourth of July.) Consumers want blueberries to be blue and

strawberries to be a suitable shade of red. They also want them to be fresh, juicy, flavorful, nutritious and available practically year-round at an affordable price. And the berry suppliers know it.

Understandably eager for Americans to eat large quantities of berries, the berry industry employs horticulturists, geneticists and breeders such as Shaw and Cook to work on developing bigger, better, sweeter and sturdier specimens that will travel well from the picking fields to supermarket produce counters across the country.

The travel factor plays a bigger part than you might think. Fresh raspberries, for example, remain relatively poor travelers-``There isn`t a raspberry that travels well,`` flatly declares Robert Rothschild of Rothschild Berry Farm-which results in low yields and high prices when the fragile delicacies are available.

With all these horticulturists on the case, why aren`t we constantly being bombarded with batches of new and improved berries, the way we`re bombarded with ``new and improved`` breakfast cereals or ``new and improved`` detergents?

Improved berries take time

It`s because, unlike the breakfast food and detergent industry, the berry brigade moves slowly. Make that very slowly.

``Any time you talk about a breeding program, you`re talking about probably 20 years between the time you start developing a variety of berry in the research lab and the time it`s finally in full production in growers`

fields,`` says Cook. ``What we`re concentrating on now is developing new varieties of blueberries that will produce earlier, so that we can have berries in the stores year-round. And we`re looking for bushes that can be machine harvested; much of the fresh fruit you see in stores is still picked by hand.``

While Michigan continues to be the largest producer of blueberries, supplying about 25 percent of the 200 million tons of blueberries consumed annually in North America, breeders have developed varieties that can be grown much earlier in warmer states, such as Florida.

``We`ve been going further and further south into Florida,`` says Cook,

``and we`ve also developed some newer varieties that will keep bearing until they get frozen out in the fall, so we can have them in the stores until late September.